Throwing around credentials won't get you very far. If anything, it makes you look like a demanding ass - the loud, obnoxious, red in the face, angry mid level manager type personality.
Anyhow - AI ships are a totally different system from AI NPCs. Pirates use ship AI. Ship AI is not used for NPCs. The two systems do not even touch eachother. You're asking them to fix the roof because the toilet is clogged.
This is not an enormous studio with a single end goal in sight. Enormous studios make games with a clear goal post and are therefore able to assign an efficient order of operations to the teams working on the project. This flat out does not work on small scale indie work with the end goal being "everything and anything"
For all we know, this project doesn't even have a detailed long term road map. Most games I've seen don't. Hell, every project I've personally had any hand in has had no "completely thought out plan". A heavily detailed long term roadmap is only convenient to a small subset of potential customers, and that small subset is not as likely to just buy the game as the people who flat out do not care are. Is it worth the trouble? Because I seriously doubt it.